Sam had O.D.'d in his hospital bed in 2007 for some reason. Maybe another ex-con who had it in for him? Maybe a cackhanded nurse, or a slipped drip? Who knows. The result in 1973 is that he's behaving like an amphetamine addict and everything, not just his pet TV set, is talking to him. The radio, the advertising hoardings, the side of a milk float. He's in a bad way.

I hope everyone picked up the physical references to Jack Douglas? Sam's drug-induced twitching caused both Chris and Ray to mock his behaviour - twitching and mouthing "P-tch-wayyyy" in the manner of dear old Jack. Classic. Loved the reference to van der Valk too.

I know it's sad, but I'm desperate to catch the writers out with an anachronistic reference. I picked up their mention of Vicks Sinex last night and for the life of me I can't remember when that product was introduced. When was the first time I saw the hapless, gormless teenager whose Mum would tell him in a sing-song voice "lasts for up to eight hours" and he'd reply "oh, Mum!"? Only he had a stinking cold of course, so it sounded more like "oh, Bum!" I'm not sure if that was before or after 1973 and Vicks aren't returning my calls.

So, back to the plot, what there was of it. We sussed out it was Lamb who dunnit in the first five minutes and were then subjected to the usual mix of a past Gene Hunt suspect stitch-up, plucky young Annie doing the real detective work and being called all sorts as a result despite getting to the right answer via the right route, a bit of argy-bargy between Tyler and Hunt, and a final few minutes that didn't quite see Lamb brought to book, although it looked likely.

After the promising developments of last week's episode this one took a turn for the worse (a bit like Sam then?), back to Life On Mars By Numbers.